


Engine Trouble

by wheel_pen



Series: Venkii [7]
Category: Star Trek: Enterprise
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-21
Updated: 2013-04-21
Packaged: 2017-12-09 02:42:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/769033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wheel_pen/pseuds/wheel_pen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mila and Trip know there’s something wrong with the ship, even if no one else does.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Engine Trouble

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. The Venkii are humans who left Earth long ago, and have a few extra enhancements by now. Mila is a young Venkii woman who has joined the crew of the Enterprise, in Engineering. She can communicate with the ship in a special way.
> 
> 2\. The bad words are censored. That’s just how I do things.
> 
> I hope you enjoy this AU. I own nothing and appreciate the chance to play in this universe.

Trip vaguely heard the door chime to his quarters, then light from the hallway was spilling in on him. An instant later it was dark again and he began to wonder if he was just having a vivid dream. Then someone knelt on the bed.

"Trip!" Mila said, shaking his bare shoulder urgently. "You have to get up!"

Oh. It was one of _those_ dreams. "Oh, don't worry, darlin', I will," he assured her, taking her arms and pulling her closer.

"Trip!" she admonished. "Wake up! There's something wrong!"

Hmm, that didn't sound like the usual script. Suddenly the cabin was flooded with light and Trip began to suspect that he _might_ not be having a dream. Although Mila was in fact kneeling on his bed wearing nothing but an extra-large t-shirt and some well-tailored Starfleet-issue blue underwear, which certainly fit with a lot of dream scenarios so far. But the expression on her face was deadly serious.

"There's something wrong with ship!" she repeated earnestly, and Trip shook the last vestiges of sleep out of his head.

"What is it?"

"Come on!" Mila grabbed his hand and yanked him out of bed, out into the hallway. It was the artificially-induced "night shift" on _Enterprise_ , meaning the lights had been dimmed and the corridors were mostly empty. Still, Trip was glad he was wearing his worn grey sweatpants and not, say, _less_. She stopped him in the middle of the hall, running her hands over a wall panel. "There's something wrong," she said again, frustrated.

Trip was about to snap at her to be more specific, or perform a diagnostic, or _something_ a little more scientific when he suddenly noticed it. He stood stock still, feeling it first through his bare feet, then he crouched down and touched his hand to the deck plating. Something... _was_ wrong. The ship didn't feel right. She didn't sound right.

"There," he said when he felt it again. It was like—a heart skipping a beat. "Again." Irregular, but repeatable. And not right. Trip knew every piece of machinery on the ship backwards and forwards. Was the interrupted rhythm coming from the stabilizers? The ventilation system? The gravity plating? The hum stuttered again and suddenly he placed it. "Warp field," he told Mila, jumping to his feet. Grabbing her hand seemed like the next natural response. "Come on!"

The two of them dashed down the hall, passing only the occasional crewmember who stared after them in confusion, but at the moment Trip didn't care what they looked like: the engines weren't working correctly, which meant the ship might be in danger. He shoved open the door to Engineering, Mila right behind him, releasing her hand only when he hurtled up onto the landing before the reactor controls. Mila ran to the side of the reactor itself, hands brushing frantically over the outer casing.

"Um, Commander?" questioned Lt. Hess, who had just been checking the reactor's readings. Trip had nearly knocked her off the landing with his rapid ascent. "Is something wrong?"

Idiot. He thought he'd _trained_ this woman. "You bet your a-s there's something wrong," Trip snapped. Hess immediately stopped smirking at his attire, or lack thereof, and paid attention. "Something wrong with the warp field. D'you find it yet?" he shouted down to Mila. She shook her head.

Hess looked down at the controls Tucker was manipulating. "The readings are all within normal range, Commander," she offered, a bit more timidly.

"Normal range, huh?" Trip repeated derisively. He grabbed Hess's hand and slapped it down on the reactor casing. "This feel _normal_ to you?" They waited. "There," Trip pointed out when he felt the arrhythmic vibration. "And there." He let his lieutenant go and looked at her expectantly.

"I'm-I'm sorry, Commander," Hess admitted, "but I don't feel anything."

"For the love of—" Trip rolled his eyes and decided to ignore the woman. "Mila!"

"Somewhere in Sector 12, I think," the brunette called back, still trying to narrow down the anomaly.

Trip pulled up the diagnostics on Sector 12 on the computer screen. Hess looked torn between trying to help him and running for Security. Down on the deck Ensign Jimenez silently asked her what the h—l was going on; she had to respond with body language that she had no idea. "Look at that," Trip muttered to himself, then repeated louder when he didn't get a response from Hess, "Look at that!" He pointed to the wave pattern generated by Sector 12, overlapping it with a 'normal' pattern. They differed by a fraction of a micron. "That's what I'm talking about."

Hess stared at the screen. "Sir?"

Trip was ignoring her again. There was only one person in this engine room he trusted at the moment. "Mila! One of the injectors must be clogged."

She nodded and trotted over to the injector assembly, the deck plating cold on her bare feet. Spreading her hands over the panel housing the plasma injectors she felt carefully, like a doctor checking for tiny broken bones. "Number 3 has a syncopation," she finally announced. "And number 5. They must be crossing each other in Sector 12."

Trip braced his hands on the control panel for a moment, hanging his head. Good G-d, did he have a bunch of monkeys running this place or _what_?! Well, really, it had to be his own fault; obviously he hadn't trained them properly, instilled the appropriate sense of detail in them. Trip knew that as the head of Engineering he had to take responsibility for this to the Captain. But he was going to give his 'team' h—l for it, that was for sure.

"Engineering to Bridge," he finally said after flicking the intercom.

" _Bridge here_ ," T'Pol answered in her crisp tones, unaffected by the late hour.

"We gotta drop outta warp," Trip announced to her. "There's a problem with the warp field."

There was a pause. " _Our_ _readings are within normal parameters_ ," the First Officer responded coolly.

Trip avoided a sigh. "You want me to wait an hour, when you've got a red light flashin' and I gotta shut these things down cold?"

" _That would not be preferable, Commander_ ," T'Pol pointed out. " _Do what you must. I shall inform the Captain_."

"Thank you," Trip answered sarcastically, not sure if it had come out before or after he cut off the intercom. "Mila! We're droppin' to impulse." She nodded. He turned to Hess, who still stood at his elbow. "Make yourself useful and go shut down the field generators," he ordered her, not particularly kind. She was eager to get away.

About twenty minutes later Captain Archer—awakened and dressed—poked his head into Engineering to see what all the fuss was about. Trip had every staffer on the shift lined up before him, pacing back and forth like a basic training general regarding the most unpromising group of new cadets he'd seen in a long time. Archer was afraid that the wrath Trip was so clearly trying to project might be undermined by the fact that he wore only a pair of sweatpants. Holey ones that appeared to be a tad bit too big at that. Also Mila leaning against the warp core in a t-shirt that barely concealed her skivvies might prove a distraction to some of the crew.

"—so you are going to take the _entire_ g-----n injector assembly apart, _clean_ every g-----n piece of it, and run _every_ g-----n diagnostic in the book once you've put it back together! And only when _I_ am satisfied that this engine is running up to specifications are we going back to warp!" Trip must have seen some expression he didn't like on one of the crew, because he suddenly whipped around and got right in an ensign's face. "You think this is _funny_ , mister?!"

"No, sir!" the terrified man replied.

"You think maybe a warp field distortion is something _amusing_ , something _minor_? You think it would be _funny_ to destabilize the entire warp field? At top speed? See the _entire_ _f‑‑‑‑‑g_ _ship_ destroyed? Would that be _funny_?"

"No, sir!"

"Good," Trip snarled. Archer hid a smirk behind his hand, even though he was still out of sight.

"Um, sir..." Hess ventured bravely. Trip turned his piercing gaze on her. "We-we would've caught the imbalance in time, sir. All the indicators would have—"

"In _time_?" Trip repeated acidly. "You would have caught it 'in time'? _It should never have existed to be caught, Lieutenant!_ That's not one, but _two_ plasma injectors that have been improperly maintained. _That should never happen in my engine room._ Is that understood?" He was met with silence. "I said— _Is that understood_?!"

"Yes, sir!" the crew responded in hearty unison.

"Now I don't care if every indicator light, siren, and g-----n _door chime_ on this ship would've gone off 'in time' to prevent _total warp field destabilization_ ," Trip went on. "The only difference would be, this conversation would occur two hours later, after the engines had a h—l of a lot more wear and tear on 'em from a cold shutdown! So I don't want to hear another g‑‑‑‑‑n _word_ out of you people unless it has to do with cleaning those plasma injectors!" There was a pause as everyone held their breath. "Move your a-ses, g-------t!" Suddenly everyone on the crew was off and running, with Lt. Hess as the shift leader shouting specific orders.

Trip was watching the scurry with disgust when Mila caught his eye and nodded towards the door. Archer steeled his expression to something resembling seriousness and strode across the room to meet the pair halfway. He tried not to stare at their clasped hands. Trip's manner with his commanding officer was, fortunately, decidedly less irate. "Sorry 'bout all this, Cap'n," he began, unsure what he had already been told or heard, "but the whole injector assembly will have to be taken apart and cleaned, and then all the tests run."

"How long will we have to stay at impulse?" Archer queried.

"Six hours," Trip estimated. "More if this _g‑‑‑‑‑n bunch of apes with hypo-spanners_ can't do it right on the first try." The key phrase was shouted towards the rest of the room as Mila looked appropriately superior.

"And you think it's really necessary?"

Trip's expression was almost startled. Mila frowned like she was regarding an idiot. Archer fought to keep his face straight before them. "We got two clogged injectors, Cap'n," Trip pointed out. "We probably woulda run okay for another hour or two, but after that it'd be shut down or blow up."

Archer had to get just a little more in. "T'Pol said the readings were all normal. How did you know there was something wrong?"

"Well, I gotta admit Mila here caught it first," Trip confessed, giving credit where credit was due.

"It woke me up," she supplied. "It was completely obvious."

"All I had to do was get out on the deck and it was clear as day, sir," Trip concurred. "I don't know why no one else noticed it."

_Perhaps because they were all wearing shoes,_ Archer thought to himself. "Well, good job saving the ship," the Captain concluded, taking in both Trip and Mila. "Maybe you two would like to get dressed now."

As if for the first time Trip and Mila looked down at their decidedly non-regulation appearance and seemed slightly embarrassed. "Good point, sir," Trip conceded. He tried to subtly hitch the sweatpants up a little higher as Mila tugged on the hem of her t-shirt. Archer gestured for the two of them to go ahead and leave. As they reached the door, Trip turned around and gave one final shout to the room. "Hess! I will be back in _ten minutes_!" The lieutenant practically saluted in response and Archer swallowed his grin so hard he nearly choked on it. Then Trip and Mila disappeared through the door, looking for the shortest route back to their quarters.


End file.
